Once again, I was away from my blog for a really long time. Haven’t been this inactive ever, but things were happening fast. Some good, some not so good. There were periods of elation, adventure and celebration, yet also confusion, heartbreak, grief, listlessness and despondency. Of late, I was not feeling too good about myself, either. Aren’t they too many emotions for a sentence? Well! It could be due to my newly acquired skill to reflect and realize the exact emotion. How? Read on!

The Indian national body for education, the NCERT, prescribes mandatory training of 50 hours for all teachers teaching the national curriculum. These 50 hours are divided into 25 hours of trainings conducted by the CBSE itself through various portals, and 25 hours of in house trainings. Our school management had started conducting such trainings for us even before the NCERT prescribed it.

For me, the CBSE training wasn’t much of a difficulty since my course in career counseling and some additional trainings ensured that I completed more than 350 hours of training; But I was behind by 5 hours for the in-house ones. Some I missed due to other commitments, and some I didn’t attend. In addition to that, there are some mandatory workshops which we have to attend but then there are some which are optional. Being a Google trainer since last year, an MCE, and an MIEE for the third year in a row, and having conducted some workshops for my colleagues in school and a group of homemakers for the International Inner Wheel, I chose to ditch most of the workshops in ed-tech.

When I told my superior that I was short on 5 hours of training she asked me to take up a few in ed-tech. I wasn’t keen on training in Minecraft and other such apps in the suite of Office 365 but one that I found particularly worth considering was about a new feature on MS Teams by Juanatech. The caption read, “Build social and emotional skills in your classroom community with Reflect.” Anything related to managing emotions is listed high on my agenda as it is important to me not only as an educator but also as a counselor. So, I chose to register for the webinar.

The session was conducted by a pair of knowledgeable and vivacious women. They explained a bit about Social-emotional learning (SEL) and its importance. My most important take-away from the session was, “Teaching without relationship leads to no learning and rules without relationship result in rebellion.” Then they went on to explain about Reflect’, a new feature of Microsoft Teams, specifically for schools. It helps students recognize and navigate their emotions by providing regular opportunities to share and be heard. It also encourages them to identify and express their emotions through a variety of emoticons and illustrations. I liked it for its ability to help children identify their emotions better and understand how exactly are they feeling when they say good/bad, happy/unhappy etc. A really good feature to help the teachers and students build their interpersonal relationship and build emotional vocabulary.

The last segment of the webinar was a quiz on Kahoot. All the participants had to take a short, rapid-fire quiz of 10 questions and the leaderboard kept displaying the names of the top scorers question after question. Two of my colleagues were at the forefront, vying for the top position. For the greater part of this quiz, I was somewhere between the 5th and 7th positions, only climbing up to 3rd once. The last question was not an MCQ, however- and we had to type in the answer. I had got all my answers correct as was notified on the personal board. Then started the drumroll and surprise surprise, my name was there in the first position! Now this was unexpected but a win is a win however small. All the more special when you are trailing all the time!😀

Now, I am just an hour short of the stipulated 25 hours, have acquired knowledge of a new feature and as a prize for the quiz, am expecting a voucher worth 1K in my mail this week. What more can one ask for! Sometimes the entire Universe conspires to make you feel good about yourself.